If this is your first visit be sure to check out the FAQ. You have to REGISTER before you can post. To start viewing threads, select the forum that you want to visit from the list below.NOTICE: YOUR ACCESS HAS BEEN LIMITED UNTIL YOU REGISTER!

In order to ensure your registration and verification goes smoothly and quickly you should edit your user profile and add some content that verifies your not a robot. Add an avatar or profile image, add some location information, setup your signature, send the admin a quick private message, etc. You can make these changes by clicking on "Settings" in the top right corner of the site. Once inside your personal settings control panel, you can click on edit profile or any of the other options to begin your customizations.

Doing this will help the forum moderators verify your registration and allow you access to the entire forum.If you refuse to do this or take steps to verify your humanity, there is a very good chance your account will be deleted instead of verified.Users that look suspicious or have suspicious email addresses and users with no profile information will be deleted without warning.

Sen. Lindsey Graham..GOP should hold a debt ceiling increase hostage

Speaking to Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Monday, Graham suggested that Republicans should not agree to tax rate hikes on the rich and should hold a debt ceiling increase hostage until Democrats agreed to "entitlement reform."

"Here's where the president is going to have a rude awakening," the senior senator from South Carolina opined. "In February or March, you have to raise the debt ceiling and I can tell you this, there's a hardening on the Republican side. We're not going to raise the debt ceiling, we're not going to let Obama borrow any more money or any American Congress borrow any more money until we fix this country from becoming Greece. And that requires significant entitlement reform to save Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy."

MacCallum noted that Obama told business leaders last week that he would not "play that game" with Republicans because "we’ve got to break that habit" of allowing them to use the debt ceiling in budget negotiations.

"Yes, we will play that game, Mr. President, because this is not a game," Graham insisted. Its a game but its not a game!!!! What a brainless moron!!!!!"The game you're playing is small ball. You're talking about raising rates on the top 2 percent that would run the government for 11 days. You just got re-elected. How about doing something big that's not liberal? How about doing something big that really is bipartisan? Every big idea he has is a liberal idea that drowns us in debt."

"How about manning up here, Mr. President, and use your mandate to bring this country together to stop us from becoming Greece?" he continued. "So when it comes debt ceiling time, Mr. President, you're going to have a Republican Party that's going to make sure we save Medicare and Social Security from bankruptcy and we save this country from becoming Greece."

Graham concluded: "He's a small ball guy. He's afraid of his own party."

A Washington Post fact check on Monday determined that Graham's assertion that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would go "bankrupt" was overblown because "the facts do not justify such rhetoric."

"In this case we are going to bump Graham up to Three Pinocchios," the Post's Glenn Kessler wrote. "Not only did he repeat the error of treating all of Medicare as one entity, but he did the same with Social Security. Moreover, his reference to Medicaid makes little sense, even if one has very expansive definitions of the words 'bankruptcy' and 'imminent.'"

Once again they are prepared to hold the WHOLE country to ransom just to protect the top 2% from paying higher taxes.

My advice to Obama.....

No concessions...

They lost.

They have no mandate to dictate.

Rather, go over the cliff and then let the GOP vote against keeping the tax breaks for the 98%. Let them bring the country to default , which is an attack on every US citizen, and let them explain to the country why this is necessary.

The only ones who really hate Obamacare are the ones with Govt HC insurance.

Q

Remarkable.You leak a story, and then you quote the story. I mean,that's a remarkable thing to do

Dementia is a loss of mental ability severe enough to interfere with normal activities of daily living, lasting more than six months, not present since birth, and not associated with a loss or alteration of consciousness.

Q

Remarkable.You leak a story, and then you quote the story. I mean,that's a remarkable thing to do

I like Rand Pauls idea. Let the Dems vote for raising taxes and have all the republicans vote present.

RP is an idiot. What will happen is that the Dems will bring a bill to restore the Bush tax cuts for the 98% and the GOP will then have to decide if they can vote against it and still pretend to be the party for tax cuts.

Last night, he told Greta van Susteren on Fox News that House Republicans should pass a bill with their specific plan to cut spending and fix the tax code to address the fiscal-cliff issues, and dare the Senate to take it up

This is something they refuse to do. They want the dems to propose specific spending cuts and its not going to happen.

Republicans are dong it AGAIN! Already, this week, consumer confidence dropped sharply, small business confidence dropped sharply, the markets have become volital. Republicans are refusing to acknowledge that they have NO MANDATE for this continuing obstruction.

They have had at least a year ... why has everyone waited till the last minute.

BTW ... when was the last budget passed by the senate?

What's that?

Nearly four years?

This is where you shamelessly defend the regime. again.

Could you be more clueless?

You are talking off the topic. Holding the debt ceiling increase hostage is not going over the cliff. Either, both, or neither can occur without regard to the other thing.

A president has nothing to do with the Senate passing 'a budget,' which is not how money is lawfully spent. The president does not sign budgets passed by the Congress, AND lawful authority to spend the public's money REQUIRES the president's signature (or overturning his veto). That should show you there is an extreme difference in those two things that sound similar.

Those so-called (total) 'budgets' (really more like annual budget spending CAPS) are an internal matter to the two Houses of Congress, pursuant to budget reforms that only passed in the '70s iirc. Before the '70s, money was lawfully spent without the belt and suspenders act of first passing a non-binding wholistic budget total which is meaningless at the end of the day. Money is now spent lawfully without these non-binding, not-signed by the president so-called 'budgets' (which do not authorize spending anything) passing.

The last time the minority party insisted on taking the debt ceiling hostage that fact alone-- how screwed up was our ability to handle budgetary matters-- was what caused our credit downgrade. NOT our financial situation per se, but how broken were our institutions to come to financial agreements.

If shameless extortion artists like little Ms. Graham do the same crime against the country's interests again, we may have our credit rating as a country dropped another notch.

This apparently because we do not immediately agree to do something else in 10 years. This would be hilarious if it were not so pitiful. It would never be done in interpersonal relations, where the comparable situation would be in a dispute in a spending or budget in a marriage situation, the answer is to refuse to pay for food and rent to force what cannot be gotten by negotiation between the parties, for one of the parties to get their total way.